By Paul Hutcheon
A body set up to overhaul MSPs' expenses will this month back the abolition of the scheme that allows Holyrood politicians to bill the public for mortgage payments in Edinburgh.
The Allowances Review Panel, which could issue its report as early as this week, will recommend that no mortgage claims should be paid for any MSP after the current parliament comes to an end in 2011.
MSPs will be restricted to renting or staying in hotels when they need overnight accommodation at Holyrood. However, they will receive more public money for hiring staff.
The proposal is a victory for the Sunday Herald after we campaigned against the Edinburgh Accommodation Allowance (EAA), which permits MSPs to charge the taxpayer for up to £9446 a year in mortgage costs on a property in the capital. They can also claim for council tax, a television licence and utility bills.
Well-publicised abuses of the scheme prompted the parliament last year to order a review of the entire MSPs' allowances system.
The key recommendation of the review group, which is headed by Dundee University principal Sir Alan Langlands, is for mortgage interest payments to stop in 2011, at the end of the current parliament.
Phased-out abolition of the scheme, which will need to be approved by parliament, will anger the 30 or so MSPs who currently claim up to £1000 a month in mortgage costs.
These MSPs, who include SNP finance minister John Swinney and LibDem leader Nicol Stephen, will no longer be able to claim for properties they have been buying with public money.
Ending the scheme is also likely to put pressure on Westminster to follow suit. A number of MPs believe the Westminster equivalent of the EAA, the Additional Costs Allowance (ACA), should also be abolished.
The EAA has helped around 55 MSPs since 1999 buy property in Edinburgh worth £5.8 million, of which £1.2m was recouped in mortgage interest payments.
The top complaint among the public is of MSPs making huge profits on the sale of their properties while in office. Alex Johnstone, the Tory member for the North East of Scotland, made £60,000 on a flat that public money helped buy.
Jim Wallace, the former LibDem leader, made £69,000 on his taxpayer-funded property dealings, while his colleague Mike Rumbles made post-sale gains of almost £40,000 through the sale of two flats bought partly by the state.
Another creative use of the scheme was MSPs using the perk to trade up on their properties. Tavish Scott, the LibDem MSP for Shetland, used the £36,000 gain made on one taxpayer-funded flat to help buy a £380,000 family home in Morningside. Scott's claim on the public purse increased from £500 to nearly £979 a month as a result.
Another practice was MSPs rearranging their decades-old property holdings in such a way as to allow them to pocket the allowance. Stewart Stevenson, the wealthy SNP transport minister, could not claim for his residence in Linlithgow because he had bought it before he was an MSP.
He then sold the 30-year-old family home for a profit of £267,000, used the money to buy a property close to his old residence, and then claimed mortgage interest on his new place.
Deputy Tory leader Murdo Fraser's use of the allowance also raised eyebrows.
The MSP bills the public for a second home in Edinburgh's Brunton Terrace, but owns another property just around the corner, which he rents out.
A Scottish parliament spokesman said: "We would not comment on the review's report, or any possible recommendations, until after it is published. The report is on schedule to be released in March as planned."
